Resistance 2
Mirror's Edge - 360
Quantum of Solace - 360
House of the Dead: Overkill - Story & Directors Cut
Fable 2 - Story Mode
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriot - (Liquid Easy)
Wario Ware: Smooth Moves
Saints Row
Race Pro - Career Mode
50 Cent: Blood on the Sand (Easy) - 360
Conan (Easy) - PS3
GTA IV - 360
So finally a year later sees my chalk up completion of this. It's not the masterpiece that it was reviewed as. It's an amazing achievement certainly but some of the things they've achieved just aren't much fun.. Still I enjoyed Niko's story and felt he was a cool character to play as.
Showing posts with label GTA IV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GTA IV. Show all posts
Sunday, 17 May 2009
Friday, 15 May 2009
Currently Playing: GTA IV
AKA Back to Libery City. Turns out the mission I was stuck on is the final mission. The Official Stratergy guide doesn't really help either. Apparently I'm supposed to use the speed boat to catch up with the chopper and press triangle. The fact that the time limit is so tight that multiple attempts have never seen me get close enough doesn't seem to bother them. Of course the fact that Rockstar hate checkpoints and I have to go back to the beginning of the mission every time doesn't help either.
The Guide does point out though that if I make a different choice the mission before I'll get a slightly different take on the last mission that doesn't involve a speed boat. Hurrah. Fortunately I have multiple saves (I tend to keep five or so on the go and rotate through them) so making the other choice wasn't difficult. The mission itself is a ball ache though.
Let's be honest, despite all the plaudits GTA IV got the crux of the experience can be annoying. The driving model is terrible. The cars understeer like fuck and then snap into terrible oversteer. I spent most of last night pinging of walls and traffic like some kind of demented pinball.. Presumably practice helped but in isolation it's terrible. The much vaunted gunplay is still pretty rubbish too. A lot of later missions involve shooting through doorways and you just can't get a useable bead on a target in through the narrow openings. Even when your trying to get a lock on a target around a corner that you can clearly see the gun appears to be firing into the wall impotently.
On the cargo ship mission you're supposed to climb up a crane and snipe as many guys as you can. Which is fine. Then you have to slowly make your way through to the upper decks clearing bad guys as you go. Once you get to the bridge you can open the cargo hold and then more bad guys have arrived and your supposed to clear your way back down again. Sadly by this point a combination of over whelming numbers and broken combat will probably leave you very thin on health. I'd tried this mission multiple times last year before giving up and taking the other choice. Not this time. I basically just ran and jumped off the ship. Swam around to the docks. Climbed the crane again and sniped as many as I could before once again taking to the ship. This worked quite well. Then I managed to snipe a lot of bad guys from above the cargo hold before leaping in. Then there's another cut scene and your confronted with a boss battle. By this time I've got very little health and I'm bricking myself about dying. Fortunately I whittle the number of bad guys down before getting a cheeky sniped head shot in.. Then it tells you to make your way off the boat. I drive back to my safe house very carefully only to find that I can't 'save' mid mission.. not only do we not have a checkpoint apparently I'm not even finished...
I eventually cleared it and saved and made my way to the final mission.. I got most of the way throught it.. I'm chasing the final boss through the park only to find that after three massive gun battles, chasing the copter on a motorbike. Getting aboard the copter and following it too the park watching a cut scene on of my NPCs in the party has been killed cos I left him alone to chase the bad guy as instructed.. And guess what.. No checkpoint back to the beginning.
I'll perservere tonight...
The Guide does point out though that if I make a different choice the mission before I'll get a slightly different take on the last mission that doesn't involve a speed boat. Hurrah. Fortunately I have multiple saves (I tend to keep five or so on the go and rotate through them) so making the other choice wasn't difficult. The mission itself is a ball ache though.
Let's be honest, despite all the plaudits GTA IV got the crux of the experience can be annoying. The driving model is terrible. The cars understeer like fuck and then snap into terrible oversteer. I spent most of last night pinging of walls and traffic like some kind of demented pinball.. Presumably practice helped but in isolation it's terrible. The much vaunted gunplay is still pretty rubbish too. A lot of later missions involve shooting through doorways and you just can't get a useable bead on a target in through the narrow openings. Even when your trying to get a lock on a target around a corner that you can clearly see the gun appears to be firing into the wall impotently.
On the cargo ship mission you're supposed to climb up a crane and snipe as many guys as you can. Which is fine. Then you have to slowly make your way through to the upper decks clearing bad guys as you go. Once you get to the bridge you can open the cargo hold and then more bad guys have arrived and your supposed to clear your way back down again. Sadly by this point a combination of over whelming numbers and broken combat will probably leave you very thin on health. I'd tried this mission multiple times last year before giving up and taking the other choice. Not this time. I basically just ran and jumped off the ship. Swam around to the docks. Climbed the crane again and sniped as many as I could before once again taking to the ship. This worked quite well. Then I managed to snipe a lot of bad guys from above the cargo hold before leaping in. Then there's another cut scene and your confronted with a boss battle. By this time I've got very little health and I'm bricking myself about dying. Fortunately I whittle the number of bad guys down before getting a cheeky sniped head shot in.. Then it tells you to make your way off the boat. I drive back to my safe house very carefully only to find that I can't 'save' mid mission.. not only do we not have a checkpoint apparently I'm not even finished...
I eventually cleared it and saved and made my way to the final mission.. I got most of the way throught it.. I'm chasing the final boss through the park only to find that after three massive gun battles, chasing the copter on a motorbike. Getting aboard the copter and following it too the park watching a cut scene on of my NPCs in the party has been killed cos I left him alone to chase the bad guy as instructed.. And guess what.. No checkpoint back to the beginning.
I'll perservere tonight...
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
Round up of the Year - Part 3.
So here it is.. the big one. Apologies for being so late. I was trying to spend as much time with the big hitters as I could before making my judgement. I've managed to polish off a couple as you can see below and I've been trying to work up enthusiasm to play Little Big Planet. But at the moment I can't. Which probably says it's not going to be my GOTY.
So what is. Well not GTA IV. It's a good game but for me hasn't moved on enough. It's still basically the same game we've been playing since three and where were all the exciting missions?
Saints Row 2 was the surprise of the year and almost clinched it. Yes the production values are a lot lower than GTA IV but it's far more fun. There's checkpoints, there's recharging health, there's full co-op play. Almost everything is big dumb fun from start to finish.. But it's a little derivative and the gang/bling culture thing is a little off putting (Although you can pretty much ignore it).
For me the game that I enjoyed the most and sucked me into an awesome world of possibilty and depth was Fallout 3. I've already written plenty about it so I wont repeat myself here. Suffice to say it's an awesome achievement.
So what is. Well not GTA IV. It's a good game but for me hasn't moved on enough. It's still basically the same game we've been playing since three and where were all the exciting missions?
Saints Row 2 was the surprise of the year and almost clinched it. Yes the production values are a lot lower than GTA IV but it's far more fun. There's checkpoints, there's recharging health, there's full co-op play. Almost everything is big dumb fun from start to finish.. But it's a little derivative and the gang/bling culture thing is a little off putting (Although you can pretty much ignore it).
For me the game that I enjoyed the most and sucked me into an awesome world of possibilty and depth was Fallout 3. I've already written plenty about it so I wont repeat myself here. Suffice to say it's an awesome achievement.
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
The "Complete" List
John Woo Presents Stranglehold
Portal
Test Drive: Unlimited ( ALL Gold in the SP challenges.)
Loco Roco*
The Darkness (Easy)
Lost: Via Domus
LEGO Indiana Jones - The Original Adventures (Story Mode)
Battlefield: Bad Company (Easy) & (Normal)
Ratchet & Clank : Quest for Booty
God of War: Chains of Olympus
Tiger Woods 2009
Haze
Saints Row 2
It's been a pretty rubbish year for completing games for me this year. There's been a lot of games I've put a lot of time into and haven't had the enthusiasm/skill for the final push to completion and some of the games I've completed (TD:U and Portal)where kind of hung over from last year. Still I hope to make a decent final push in the last two months.
What can I say about Saints Row 2? I started off saying it wasn't a GTA IV beater.. And in some ways I probably wasn't wrong. Rockstars effort has more polish, better characters (If there was an award for supporting character of the year Packie would win it every time) better physics, better car handling and although it's not quite so cut and dried probably the more memorable missions (certainly the HEAT copying mission and the funeral where gaming highlights of the year) but in almost every way that counts Saints Row 2 is the superior game.
Most Importantly it's heaps more fun. The co-op is fantastic. Being the crime lord is much more fun than working for them. The gun combat (despite not having any cover) is far more fun. The side missions are far more fun. The locations are nearly always better, The character customisation is brilliant, It has checkpoints, it has recovering health... There's far less frustration and there's much more interesting stuff to do.
Suffice to say I had a blast all the way through. Everything you'd like to try it not only let's you do but will probably reward you for doing. I've spent nearly 30 hours on it in just under a week. Who couldn't love a game that let's you do nearly everything wearing nipple tassles, a g string and a pair of high heels?
A strong contender at this point (with a whole heap of big titles to come) for GOTY
Portal
Test Drive: Unlimited ( ALL Gold in the SP challenges.)
Loco Roco*
The Darkness (Easy)
Lost: Via Domus
LEGO Indiana Jones - The Original Adventures (Story Mode)
Battlefield: Bad Company (Easy) & (Normal)
Ratchet & Clank : Quest for Booty
God of War: Chains of Olympus
Tiger Woods 2009
Haze
Saints Row 2
It's been a pretty rubbish year for completing games for me this year. There's been a lot of games I've put a lot of time into and haven't had the enthusiasm/skill for the final push to completion and some of the games I've completed (TD:U and Portal)where kind of hung over from last year. Still I hope to make a decent final push in the last two months.
What can I say about Saints Row 2? I started off saying it wasn't a GTA IV beater.. And in some ways I probably wasn't wrong. Rockstars effort has more polish, better characters (If there was an award for supporting character of the year Packie would win it every time) better physics, better car handling and although it's not quite so cut and dried probably the more memorable missions (certainly the HEAT copying mission and the funeral where gaming highlights of the year) but in almost every way that counts Saints Row 2 is the superior game.
Most Importantly it's heaps more fun. The co-op is fantastic. Being the crime lord is much more fun than working for them. The gun combat (despite not having any cover) is far more fun. The side missions are far more fun. The locations are nearly always better, The character customisation is brilliant, It has checkpoints, it has recovering health... There's far less frustration and there's much more interesting stuff to do.
Suffice to say I had a blast all the way through. Everything you'd like to try it not only let's you do but will probably reward you for doing. I've spent nearly 30 hours on it in just under a week. Who couldn't love a game that let's you do nearly everything wearing nipple tassles, a g string and a pair of high heels?
A strong contender at this point (with a whole heap of big titles to come) for GOTY
Saturday, 18 October 2008
First Look @ Saints Row 2
Well on first impressions it's no GTA IV beater. Obviously visuals aren't everything but man.. It's like I'd switched on my XBOX again. Still the opening sequence was amusing (A reference to dead R'n'B star knocking out records from beyond the grave made me chuckle and pretty much sets the standard) and you're soon on to a rather detailed character creation screen. Here you can spend as much or as little time (you can randomise most of it) as you want perfecting your character. I went with a Brandon Lee in The Crow crossed with Arnie in his prime and a dash of skater chick vibe. Obviously she looks ridiculous.
The game then get's underway and your off to reclaim the streets. The game itself while fairly robust (it didn't crash at least) is rather glitchy with NPC's popping in and out of cars and walls and the AI is terrible. One mission saw me being driven by an NPC into every pylon and wall we came across.. Still the controls are solid as is the action with a nice Resi 4 style over the shoulder 'zoom' for better aiming and a reasonable selection of weapons even early on. So far so average.
What lifted the game a 100% for me was when I invited a friend in for some co-op carnage. We started with some of the side missions (annoyingly you need to do enough of these to earn story missions). The first such mission was basically trying to create a set amount of carnage in a neighbourhood and was hilarious with the pair of us blowing up and shooting everything in sight. It works very well and there wasn't any lag. Voice communication was solid and we could drive together (one drives, one shoots) and soon got on to some missions proper. It's an awful lot of fun.
The game then get's underway and your off to reclaim the streets. The game itself while fairly robust (it didn't crash at least) is rather glitchy with NPC's popping in and out of cars and walls and the AI is terrible. One mission saw me being driven by an NPC into every pylon and wall we came across.. Still the controls are solid as is the action with a nice Resi 4 style over the shoulder 'zoom' for better aiming and a reasonable selection of weapons even early on. So far so average.
What lifted the game a 100% for me was when I invited a friend in for some co-op carnage. We started with some of the side missions (annoyingly you need to do enough of these to earn story missions). The first such mission was basically trying to create a set amount of carnage in a neighbourhood and was hilarious with the pair of us blowing up and shooting everything in sight. It works very well and there wasn't any lag. Voice communication was solid and we could drive together (one drives, one shoots) and soon got on to some missions proper. It's an awful lot of fun.
Wednesday, 28 May 2008
Currently Playing: GTA IV
Well I think enough time has passed where my slow-ish (What can I say? I have a life) progress on GTA IV will no longer be a spoiler risk for people who picked it up on or about launch..
To be fair I'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail anyway.. I think it's a game that's best approached with an open mind. Certainly there's a lot less scale than there was in GTA:SA but possibly a lot more to do, of worth, at any one time. I have just unlocked the third island and I've got several missions that I can attempt and I'm juggling my time among several friends and prospective girlfriends.
However it's only towards the second half of the game (assuming that the content is spread reasonably between the three main islands) that the story and missions have really started to gel along with my mastery of the combat and driving. There's a couple of things that still annoy.. Mostly the lack of checkpoints mid-mission and the fact that cars and vehicles spawn around you which annoy. Having said that judicious use of the cover system means most missions aren't tooooo annoying. Certainly the Bank Heist mission (which gives more than a nod or two in Heats direction has been the high point for me.
Overall then so far a satisfying next gen update.
To be fair I'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail anyway.. I think it's a game that's best approached with an open mind. Certainly there's a lot less scale than there was in GTA:SA but possibly a lot more to do, of worth, at any one time. I have just unlocked the third island and I've got several missions that I can attempt and I'm juggling my time among several friends and prospective girlfriends.
However it's only towards the second half of the game (assuming that the content is spread reasonably between the three main islands) that the story and missions have really started to gel along with my mastery of the combat and driving. There's a couple of things that still annoy.. Mostly the lack of checkpoints mid-mission and the fact that cars and vehicles spawn around you which annoy. Having said that judicious use of the cover system means most missions aren't tooooo annoying. Certainly the Bank Heist mission (which gives more than a nod or two in Heats direction has been the high point for me.
Overall then so far a satisfying next gen update.
Friday, 2 May 2008
Purchase Power
As previously mentioned I had the day off on Tueday.. However a quick browse of the EDGE forum seemed to indicate that there was no chance of picking up an un-pre-ordered copy in town.
I decided to order a PS3 copy from Play.com. They where out of stock and recently their deliveries have been been extremely slow of late (24 T Shirt and season 6 of The Shield ordered and posted from Play.. Yet to arrive)
As it happened I'd forgotten my ticket and hotel reservation for my trip away later that day so I had to head into town anyway. Walked into Woolies and as there was no queue at the counter I asked the girl if they had GTA IV in stock.. Moments later, as is the way, I spy that indeed there are a pile of copies behind her.. So I bought the 360 version. Came home. Cancelled my order at Play and placed the disc in my 360's hungry tray.
As a short coda to the story I was wandering around Liverpool on Wednesday and indeed there wasn't a copy to be seen.. Seems like, for once, my timing was perfect.
I decided to order a PS3 copy from Play.com. They where out of stock and recently their deliveries have been been extremely slow of late (24 T Shirt and season 6 of The Shield ordered and posted from Play.. Yet to arrive)
As it happened I'd forgotten my ticket and hotel reservation for my trip away later that day so I had to head into town anyway. Walked into Woolies and as there was no queue at the counter I asked the girl if they had GTA IV in stock.. Moments later, as is the way, I spy that indeed there are a pile of copies behind her.. So I bought the 360 version. Came home. Cancelled my order at Play and placed the disc in my 360's hungry tray.
As a short coda to the story I was wandering around Liverpool on Wednesday and indeed there wasn't a copy to be seen.. Seems like, for once, my timing was perfect.
Monday, 28 April 2008
Great Expectations
So is there any chance that tomorrow will live up to the hype? I have the morning off work and yet I've not pre-ordered a copy. Will I pick up a copy on PS3 or 360? I guess availability and price will decide me on the day now. The reviews I've seen have all been glowing and I think there's every chance that for once the final product will live up to the hype..
There's only one way to tell.. Suffice to say I'll be in a queue somewhere in town clutching a copy in my no doubt sweaty palms.
There's only one way to tell.. Suffice to say I'll be in a queue somewhere in town clutching a copy in my no doubt sweaty palms.
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